Gender and Rural-Urban Migration in China

Abstract

Migration is one of the most important economic, demographic and social phenomena in China today, involving the transfer of tens of millions of people from villages where they are employed — or underemployed — in agriculture, to cities, towns, or other rural areas, where they hope they will find better economic opportunities. Migration has allowed the supply of cheap labour to remain buoyant in China’s industrialising coastal regions, despite the extraordinarily rapid growth of the economy and of employment in these areas. Here, I focus on the gender aspects of this migration, attempting a preliminary discussion of the impact of migration on gender relations and the lives of women in the villages of the sending areas. Does the experience of migration empower the female migrant (usually a young woman), who may work long hours in poor conditions, but often earns more than anyone back home? When male migration leaves a woman without a husband in the village, is she empowered by being in charge of the household and the land, or disempowered, left to struggle with a heavy work burden in a sector of the economy characterised by low capitalisation and low productivity? It is too early to answer these questions fully, but we can begin to explore their dimensions.